OSCAR PRODUCERS SPEAK

On Wednesday I settled into a seat at the Dolby Theatre to interview Oscar producers Mike De Luca and Jennifer Todd, just as we were all learning that White House press secretary Sean Spicer said President Trump will probably not watch the telecast. Finally, reporters are asking the really important questions at those press briefings! “I saw that, but then I thought, That means he’s definitely going to watch,” Todd told me.

De Luca and Todd are knee-deep in trimming their show rundown, as they confront the age-old Oscar producers’ dilemma of how to give away all those awards, perform all the songs, deliver the in memoriam, bond with the host, and send everybody off to the Governors Ball before the East Coast audience starts drooling on their sofas. Amid that challenge, they’re also first-timers steering the telecast in a year when, for better or worse, politics is a major awards-season plotline. “The show shouldn’t be an op-ed page,” De Luca said. “We didn’t inject politics into the structure of the show. Presidents are four or eight years, movies are forever. We’re playing above it all. But for the winners, it is their 45 seconds to do with what they want and that’s where politics may live.”

The duo express a lot of faith in Oscar hostJimmy Kimmel to help keep the tone light, and have promised to avoid one of my awards-show pet peeves, when the host disappears for long stretches, like a character missing from a whole act of a film. And they’re counting on the kind of moments you just can’t choreograph. “If we can’t have some spontaneity,” De Luca said. “What’s the point of being live?”

A SOLUTION TO HOLLYWOOD’S 99 GENDER PROBLEMS?

Women in Film and the Sundance Institute have put a name on a long-gestating initiative designed to tackle the seemingly intractable gender-parity problems in Hollywood, according toThe Hollywood Reporter’sRebecca Sun. Dubbed ReFrame, the initiative is launching with 52 execs and creatives from across film and TV, including Nina Jacobson, Paul Feig, Kimberly Peirce, Gigi Pritzker, Stephanie Allain, Franklin Leonard, Maria Bello, De Luca, and WME’s Adriana Alberghetti. Twenty-two studios and networks have agreed to take meetings on how they’re handling gender bias, Sun reports, including all six majors, HBO, and Netflix. The group has also developed a kind of Good Housekeeping seal of approval for projects that reflect gender parity.

By Peter Stackpole/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images.

The initiative has been long in development—I first reported on it after the group held a secret, two-day meeting in 2015. The public rollout comes as studios may be especially primed to listen, since a just-concluded Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation has found that they all have systemically discriminated against female directors.

TIFF ON A DIET

The Toronto International Film Festival is getting leaner, taking its lineup down by 20 percent for 2017, reports Deadline’s Nancy Tartaglione. It seems like a smart move for the awards-season kickoff fest, where standing out from the pack has gotten difficult for all but the starriest films. Good luck to TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey, who will be the one with the difficult task of saying no to filmmakers.

UTA RALLY

UTA has announced some of the speakers and performers for their United Voices rally happening Friday afternoon in Beverly Hills, planned this year in lieu of the agency’s annual Oscar party. Jodie Foster, Keegan-Michael Key, Gavin Newsom, Michael J. Fox, and Cynthia Erivo will be there.

OSCARS SUPER TROUPER

Plenty of folks, myself included, enjoy complaining about the long march of awards season. But today I would like to confer the official Awards Season Trouper Award to Oscar-nominated Hidden Figures screenwriter Allison Schroeder, who had a baby three months ago, broke her tailbone, and is still managing to make Kenneth Lonergan giggle at roundtables. I met Schroeder, who wrote the first draft of the script before the film’s writer-director Ted Melfi took over, in the makeup chair at Vanity Fair’s social-media studio Wednesday, where she sat on a special pillow designed to protect her healing bum before speaking with my colleagueMike Hogan. La La Land choreographer Mandy Moore, Manchester by the Sea producer Kimberley Steward, and Moonlight composer Nicholas Brittell also swung through, for interviews with Hogan and VF.com’s Julie Miller. The three of us closed out the day with a predictions confab with Vanity Fair West Coast Editor Krista Smith.

YES, YOU’RE ON THE LIST

For the first time this year, Vanity Fairwill host a live stream from our storied Oscar party. Join our team of awards-show obsessives, fashion experts, and special guests on Facebook, Twitter, and VF.com.

That’s the news for this sunny Thursday in L.A. What are you seeing out there? Send tips, comments, and suggested Oscar mani-pedi colors to rebecca_keegan@condenast.com. Follow me on Twitter @thatrebecca.

Correction: A previous version of this article attributed The Hollywood Reporter story to Rebecca Ford. It was actually written by THR’s Rebecca Sun. The author of this post, who is also named Rebecca, apologizes to all Rebeccas for the error.